If you “bet” on the existence of God and find at death he does not exist, you have lost very little. But if you “bet” instead on God’s nonexistence and discover at death that God does exist, then you have lost everything eternally.

Graham Tomlin comments:

The wager is designed to blow the myth of neutrality out of the water… Pascal has brought his interlocuter to realize that he is an unbeliever not because Christianity is inherently implausible, but because he simply does not want to believe. It is not lack of proofs, but a deeply irrational distaste for the foolishness of Christianity which prevents his conversion… “your inability to believe derives from your passions,” rather than from any intellectual difficulty. The real origin of this decision not to believe is not solid intellectual objection, or the inherent irrationality of Christianity, but an irrational and unfounded prejudice, based on an inability to see the truth of Christian faith. The problem is not lack of evidence but sin.

Related

Pascal’s Wager

Patrick Schreiner

I teach New Testament at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. I am married with three children. This blog, against all wisdom, includes anything I am interested in. That includes movies, music, theology, culture, hermeneutics, the Gospels, and politics.
Feel free to comment and let me know you are reading or that you have found something helpful. I reserve the right to delete unhelpful or rude comments. Many of these posts are simply things I find interesting and therefore I am not asserting I agree with everything I link to.